Organisation and Management of Continuing Higher Education: Findings of a Comparative Study in Six Countries from a German Perspective

Abstract

An international comparison study investigated the organisation and management of continuing higher education (CHE) in Germany, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, Austria and the United States of America. CHE is compared on the system level (boundaries between traditional study programmes and CHE, linking of CHE and vocational training, accessibility openness of the HE system, and recognition of prior learning), the institutional level (type of organisation, cooperation between centralised and decentralised units, and implementation of lifelong learning), as well as on the programme level (use of ECTS-credit points, duration of courses, e-learning, and corporate programmes) in order to derive potentials for CHE and to identify decisive factors of success. The main results are reported in this article.